Valley Fever And COVID-19, Structure of Conspiracy Theories, New Climate Wars. Jan 15, 2021, Part 2
How The West Is Battling COVID-19 And Valley Fever For the past year, the COVID-19 crisis has taken up much of our attention. But the pandemic can come with complications: Some states face an onslaught of pre-existing diseases. In the American West, doctors, scientists, and patients continue to battle valley fever (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/valley-fever-covid/) , a respiratory ill...
47m Jan 15, 2021
47m
How The COVID-19 Vaccine Was Developed And Is Being Distributed. Jan 15, 2021, Part 1
How Did A Vaccine Get Developed In Less Than A Year? From the first discovery of a strange new respiratory virus in Wuhan, China, in January of 2020, it took less than a year to get a vaccine into the arms of frontline healthcare workers. (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/how-vaccine-was-developed/) More than two dozen vaccine candidates have made it from basic safety trials to Phase 3, ...
47m Jan 15, 2021
47m
COVID Fact Check, Aging Cells, News Roundup. Jan 8, 2021, Part 1
Fact Check My Feed: What’s Up With These COVID-19 Mutations? It’s a new year, and that means there’s a whole slew of new COVID-19 news to dive into, including an overwhelming amount of new information about vaccines and mutations. The U.S. has now administered roughly five million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, far behind the nation’s goal of vaccinating 20 million by the end of 2020. The two ap...
48m Jan 08, 2021
48m
Fundamentals of Physics, Giant Ancient Birds, 2021 Space Outlook. Jan 8, 2021, Part 2
Finding New Particles On The Frontier of Physics As a theoretical physicist, Frank Wilczek has made a career out of dreaming up new ways to understand our physical universe—and he’s usually right.  In the early 1980’s, he predicted the existence of a new quasiparticle, called the anyon—which was confirmed in experiments last summer. In 2004, Wilczek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for ...
47m Jan 08, 2021
47m
They Might Be Giants, Animal Sounds Quiz, Luxury Ostrich Eggs. Jan 1, 2021, Part 2
They Might Be Giants With A Timely Reminder: “Science Is Real” Fans of the band They Might Be Giants are likely to be familiar with the band’s version of the 1959 Tom Glazer song “Why Does The Sun Shine?” As they sing, “The sun is a mass / of incandescent gas / a gigantic nuclear furnace.” In their album “Here Comes Science,” the band revisits that song, and follows it with a fact-checking tr...
47m Jan 01, 2021
47m
Christmas Bird Count, Black Birders Week, Science Diction: Vaccine. Jan 1, 2021, Part 1
Where Did The Word ‘Vaccine’ Come From? As we head into 2021, there’s one word on all of our minds: Vaccine (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/science-diction-vaccine-history/) . It may be in headlines right and left these days, but the word was actually coined more than a century ago.  In the 1700s, smallpox seemed unbeatable. People tried all sorts of things to protect themselves, from...
47m Jan 01, 2021
47m
Indigenous Astronomy, Auroras, Inclusive Science. Dec 25, 2020, Part 2
Nature’s Own Holiday Light Show The spectacular glowing green of the Northern Lights is caused by charged particles from the solar wind interacting with gas molecules, atoms, and ions in the atmosphere. Protons and electrons streaming from the sun follow the Earth’s magnetic field lines, accelerating down towards the poles. The aurora process is similar to a neon sign—the charged particles exc...
48m Dec 25, 2020
48m
2020 In Review, Charismatic Tubeworms, Dog Evolution. Dec 25, 2020, Part 1
2020: The Year In Science, With Wendy Zukerman It’s the end of the year, and time to reflect. While there’s no doubt the coronavirus and efforts to combat it led the science pages this year, there was more to this year than masks and hand sanitizer.  Wendy Zukerman, host and executive producer of the Gimlet podcast Science Vs, joins Ira to talk about this very strange year, and recap some of ...
49m Dec 25, 2020
49m
Black Holes, Scallop Die-off, River Sound Map. Dec 18, 2020, Part 2
What Would Happen If You Fell Into A Black Hole? A new book, Black Hole Survival Guide, explores different theories of what would happen if you jumped into a black hole. Most of them are grizzly. As the reader traverses one of the great mysteries of the universe, they meet different fates. Author Janna Levin, a physics and astronomy professor at Barnard College at Columbia University in New Yo...
49m Dec 18, 2020
49m
Future Of Climate Change, Tongue Microbiome. Dec 18, 2020, Part 1
How The Past Hints About Our Climate’s Future Ask a climate scientist how much the earth will warm as a result of the carbon dioxide we’re emitting right now, and the answer will be a range of temperatures: likely anywhere from 1 to 5 degrees Celsius. But all the models we have to predict the future are based on data from the past, most of it collected in the last 140 years. As carbon dioxide...
49m Dec 18, 2020
49m
Science Books of 2020, ANWR Drilling, Science Diction. Dec 11, 2020, Part 2
Trump Administration Rushes To Sell Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Land For Drilling In a last-minute push, the Trump administration announced Thursday that it plans to auction off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/arctic-refuge-drilling/) in just over a month, setting up a final showdown with opponents before President-elect Joe Bi...
49m Dec 11, 2020
49m
Vaccination Logistics, Europe’s Green Deal. Dec 11, 2020, Part 1
COVID-19 Vaccinations Begin In The U.K. This week, the U.K. began its vaccination effort against COVID-19 (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/uk-begins-vaccinations/) with Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman from Coventry, becoming the first U.K. resident to receive the shot. She received a first dose of the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech, and will require a second dose in several we...
49m Dec 11, 2020
49m
Virtual Worlds And Wildfire Health Effects. Dec 4, 2020, Part 2
Science Friday’s Second Life: The Voyage Home Do you remember Second Life? That online virtual world where you can create an avatar, build whatever you want, and meet people? It was a hit in the late 2000s, quickly becoming a pop culture phenomenon. Within the first few years, an average of 38,000 users were logged in at any given time. Second Life was so big that Science Friday  (https://www....
49m Dec 04, 2020
49m
David Attenborough, China’s Moon Mission, COVID Approved In U.K. Dec 4, 2020, Part 1
David Attenborough Observes A Natural World In Crisis If you were to make a list of celebrities of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough would most likely make the cut. You probably know him from television series such as Life on Earth, The Secret Life of Plants, Living Planet, and so many more. Now, at age 94, he’s written a new book, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and Vision...
48m Dec 04, 2020
48m
Ig Nobel Prizes, Koji Alchemy. Nov 27, 2020, Part 2
Laugh Along At Home With The Ig Nobel Awards We know traditions are different this year. Maybe you’re having a small family dinner instead of a huge gathering. Maybe you’re just hopping on a video call instead of going over the river and through the woods. At Science Friday, our holiday tradition of broadcasting highlights from the annual Ig Nobel Awards ceremony is different this year too. Ra...
48m Nov 27, 2020
48m
Your Cheese’s Microbiome, COVID Reinfection Questions, Future Of Meat. Nov 27, 2020, Part 1
Can You Get COVID-19 More Than Once? SciFri producer Elah Feder’s friend tested positive for antibodies a few months ago—but last month, she developed COVID-19 symptoms again. So far, only a handful of cases of COVID reinfection have been confirmed, but we don’t yet know the true rates (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/covid-reinfection/) . Cases could be missed if the first or second in...
47m Nov 27, 2020
47m
Roman Mars, Disinformation, Ancient Female Big Game Hunters. Nov 20, 2020, Part 2
Exploring The Invisible Architecture Of Cities With Roman Mars On a walk through your city or town, there are all sorts of sights and sounds to take in—big buildings, parks and patches of green space, roaring vehicles, and people strolling around. But according to Roman Mars, host of the 99% Invisible podcast, you need to look at the smaller, often unseen details to decode what’s really going ...
48m Nov 20, 2020
48m
Famous Arecibo Observatory Decommissioned, Biden’s Climate Change Plan. Nov 20, 2020, Part 1
Puerto Rico's Famous Arecibo Observatory Decommissioned The astronomical observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, has been standing since 1963. It has weathered hurricanes, earthquakes, and time itself. But in August, a large cable—holding up one of three towers that help suspend the telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform above the collecting dish—slipped out of its socket. It fell into the dish be...
49m Nov 20, 2020
49m
Body Temperature, COVID Vaccines, Dog Genomics. Nov 13, 2020, Part 2
Our Average Body Temperature Is Getting Cooler We’ve all been getting our temperature checked on the regular these days. Most restaurants and businesses have been scanning peoples’ foreheads with thermometer guns to check for signs of fever as a safety precaution for COVID-19. We’ve been told that our temperature should be around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (or 37 degrees Celsius), the “normal” hu...
49m Nov 13, 2020
49m
Biden’s COVID Transition Team, Election Drug Policy Reform. Nov 13, 2020, Part 1
The New Biden Administration Plans For COVID-19 It’s been less than a week since it became clear that Joe Biden would be the president elect. While President Trump and his allies continue to push unsubstantiated claims of election misdeeds—with no evidence—the Biden transition team is moving into action.  This week, as coronavirus cases spike alarmingly around the country, the president-elect...
49m Nov 13, 2020
49m
Climate Policy And The Election, COVID Winter Forecast, Murder Hornets. Nov 6, 2020, Part 1
What Will The Pandemic Look Like During The Winter? It’s been almost a year since officials in China announced the spread of a mysterious pneumonia, and identified the first COVID-19 patients. On January 21, the first U.S. COVID-19 case was confirmed in Washington State. And new record highs for cases were set this week.  Since March, just about every country in the world has tried to get a h...
48m Nov 06, 2020
48m
Ancient Algae, COVID Holidays, Accessible Pregnancy Test. Nov 6, 2020, Part 2
How Algae Survived A Mass Extinction Sixty-six million years ago when an asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan peninsula, it set off a period of near global darkness for almost two years. Scientists think a majority of land species went extinct during that time, but what was going on in the planet’s oceans? And how were these ecosystems able to bounce back?  In a new paper (https://ad...
48m Nov 06, 2020
48m
Book Club Finale, Floating Nuclear Plants. Oct 30, 2020, Part 2
Pushing Boundaries In Fantastical Fiction The Science Friday Book Club has spent all of October immersed in short stories by Indigenous (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/book-club-launch/) , Black (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/book-club-afrofuturism/) , Chicanx (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/book-club-colonization/)  and South Asian (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segme...
48m Oct 30, 2020
48m
Science And The Election, Disinformation, Vampire Bats. Oct 30, 2020, Part 1
Choosing the next U.S. president is not the only decision voters will make in the upcoming 2020 elections. Major science policies are also on the ballot. In some states, people will be casting votes on propositions that influence scientific research and the environment. While in other local elections, candidates with scientific backgrounds are in the running for public office. Jeffrey Mervis of...
48m Oct 30, 2020
48m
Should We Trust Election Forecasting, COVID Dreams. Oct 23, 2020, Part 1
The first “scientific” election poll was conducted in 1936 by George Gallup, who correctly predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would win the presidential election. Since Gallup, our appetite for polls and forecasts has only grown, but watching the needle too closely might have some unintended side effects. Solomon Messing, chief scientist at ACRONYM, a political digital strategy nonprofit, te...
47m Oct 23, 2020
47m
Teaching in a Pandemic, Inheriting Stress, Book Club. Oct 23, 2020, Part 2
Even In A Pandemic, Science Class Is In Session This academic year, school campuses across the United States look very different. Instead of crowded hallways and bustling classrooms, students are spaced six feet apart, sometimes behind plastic barriers, while others are at home on camera in a video call. Since some states do not weigh in on school operations, communities witnessed a myriad of ...
48m Oct 23, 2020
48m
U.S. COVID Spikes, Blockchain Chicken Farm, Book Club: Chicanafuturism. Oct 16, 2020, Part 2
Across The Country, A Spike In Coronavirus Cases Over 217,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., and many states are seeing an upswing in case numbers as we head into fall (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/wisconsin-wyoming-coronavirus/) .  In rural Wyoming, there have been over 8,100 cases, with 57 deaths to date. More populated Wisconsin has seen over 167,000 cases—and recently...
47m Oct 16, 2020
47m
The Black Hole At The Center Of The Galaxy, Shipwreck Microbes. Oct 16, 2020, Part 1
The 2020 Nobel Prize winners have been announced, and among them is UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez, who split the prize with Roger Penrose and Reinhard Genzel. Ghez, also the fourth woman to ever win the Physics prize, won for her 1998 work that resolved a decades-old debate among astronomers: What lurks at the difficult-to-observe heart of the Milky Way? (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/ce...
47m Oct 16, 2020
47m
Science News, Nobel Roundup, Book Club. Oct 9, 2020, Part 1
What Is The Status Of President Trump’s COVID-19 Case? Late last week, President Trump announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.  This Tuesday, he left the hospital and returned to the White House. And many questions still remain (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/trump-covid-19-status/) . Reporter Umair Irfan dis...
47m Oct 09, 2020
47m
Solar System Smackdown: Mars v. Venus, Mussel Mystery. Oct 9, 2020, Part 2
Solar System Smackdown: Mars Vs. Venus One of the fiercest hunts in the solar system is the scientific search for signs of extraterrestrial life—whether that’s in a methane ocean on Titan, under the icy crusts of Europa or Enceladus, in newly discovered subsurface salty lakes of Mars or, in the case of hypothetical long-dead fossils, in the rocks of ancient Martian river deltas. But just as t...
47m Oct 09, 2020
47m
Antarctic Ice, Itching, Ancient Birds. Oct. 2, 2020, Part 2
New Study Shows No Second Chance For Antarctic Ice Shelves From the heat waves and wildfires in the western U.S. to the active hurricane season in the Gulf, the climate crisis is intensifying. Sea ice is melting in the Arctic, and the ice sheets covering Antarctica are shrinking.  Now, researchers have released the results of a study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2727-5)  using ...
48m Oct 02, 2020
48m
Trump Tests Positive For Coronavirus, COVID-19 Fact Check, SciFri Book Club. Oct. 2, 2020, Part 1
The news hit us overnight: President Trump, the First Lady, and at least one member of the president’s staff tested positive for COVID-19. Just before 1 a.m. ET, the president tweeted that “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” Sean Conley, the White House physician, confirmed the...
47m Oct 02, 2020
47m
Feather Communication, Thermal Imaging Wildfires, Tick Saliva. September 25, 2020, Part 2
Thermal Imaging Technology Helps Firefighters See Through Smoke Wildfires are still raging out west (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/thermal-imaging-smoke/) , and states are using anything in their arsenals to fight back. This year, for the first time, Oregon’s Department of Forestry is using thermal imaging technology to see through thick smoke to the fires below. The state’s firefight...
47m Sep 25, 2020
47m
Indigenous Fire Management, Oliver Sacks Film. September 25, 2020, Part 1
Down a long, single-lane road in the most northern part of California is Karuk territory—one of the largest Indigenous tribes in the state. It’s here that Bill Tripp’s great-grandmother, who was born in the 1800s, taught him starting as a 4-year-old how to burn land on purpose. “She took me outside—she was over 100 years old—and walked up the hill with her walker,” Tripp recalled, “and handed ...
47m Sep 25, 2020
47m
SciFri Extra: After 20 Years, The ‘Cosmic Crisp’ Has Landed
This fall, there’s a new apple all around town. After 20 years of development, the Cosmic Crisp has landed. Today, we're bringing you an episode of another podcast called The Sporkful (http://www.sporkful.com/) . They’re a James Beard Award-winning show that uses food as a lens to talk about science, history, race, culture, and the ideal way to layer the components of a PB&J.  This episode is...
33m Sep 21, 2020
33m
Nursing Homes, Volcano Science. Sept 18, 2020, Part 2
America’s Elder Care Has A Problem Since the pandemic began, long-term care facilities across the country have experienced some of its worst effects: One of the first major outbreaks in the U.S. began in a nursing home in Washington state. Since then, the virus has ravaged through care centers across the country—as of September 16, more than 479,000 people (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
47m Sep 18, 2020
47m
West Coast Fires, Sen. Ed Markey, Deafness Cures. Sept 18, 2020, Part 1
Peak wildfire season is just beginning on the West Coast, but 2020 is already another unprecedented year. In California, more than 2.2 million acres have burned so far this year, beating an all-time record of 1.6 million set just two years ago. And in the Pacific Northwest, where Portland’s air quality hit the worst in the world on Monday, raging fires have produced never-before-seen poor air q...
48m Sep 18, 2020
48m
Medium Black Holes, World of Wonders, Warsaw Typhus. Sept 11, 2020, Part 2
Why A Medium-Sized Black Hole Is Surprising Physicists If you’re looking for a black hole (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/medium-black-hole/) , they normally come in two sizes. There’s the basic model, in which a large, dying star collapses in on itself, and the gravity of its core pulls in other matter. Then there are the supermassive black holes, millions of times the mass of our sun...
47m Sep 11, 2020
47m
The Wonders of Moss, Clean. Sept 11, 2020, Part 1
These Moss Are Living Their Best Life—Under Rocks Desert mosses live a much different life (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/moss/) than their cousins in lush, water-rich forests. In fact, they spend most of their time dormant: dried out, waiting for the rare rainfall to bring them to life so they can grow and reproduce. Once exposed to water, though, these same mosses can re-animate qui...
47m Sep 11, 2020
47m
Fact Check Your Feed, Climate And Fungi, Cells Solve A Maze. September 4, 2020, Part 2
Can Fungus Survive Climate Change? One of the most extensive global networks for sharing information and moving around essential nutrients is hidden from us—but it’s right below our feet.  Networks of fungi often connect trees and plants to one another. But scientists are just starting to untangle what these fungal connections look like, and how important they are. Mycologist Christopher Fern...
47m Sep 04, 2020
47m
Urban Forests And Climate Change, HIV Treatment Progress. September 4, 2020, Part 1
New York City’s skyline is dominated by tall skyscrapers—but there’s a surprising amount of forest in the city known as a concrete jungle. Tree canopy actually covers about 20% of the city. In fact, woodlands are one of the few natural resources the city has. Reporter Clarisa Diaz, in collaboration with John Upton from Climate Central, shares how the city’s green spaces, both large and small, ...
47m Sep 04, 2020
47m
Milky Way Gas, COVID Ventilation, Immunotherapy And The Microbiome. August 28, 2020, Part 2
Recently, a group of scientists studying the Milky Way through the world’s largest ground-based radio telescope identified something they had never seen—a cold, dense gas that had been ejected at high speed from the galaxy’s center (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/milky-way-gas/) . The mystery of this gas—what caused it, how it could move so fast, and where it will end up—prompted resea...
47m Aug 28, 2020
47m
Coronavirus Immunity, Ask A Cephalopod Scientist. August 28, 2020, Part 1
How well you fare in fighting a new pathogen like SARS-CoV2 depends in large part on how your immune system responds to—and kills—the virus. The immune system’s job is to protect you from invasions, both right after you’re infected as well as when you encounter similar viruses in the future. As the pandemic marches on, we still don’t know exactly how our immune systems tackle this virus. The p...
47m Aug 28, 2020
47m
Pregnancy And Coronavirus, Good News For Corals. August 21, 2020, Part 1
There’s no guidebook for how to have a baby during a pandemic. Experiences like having loved ones present at the delivery, or inviting grandparents over to meet a newborn have not been an option for everyone during this time. Lockdowns across the U.S., and varying procedures at hospitals and clinics, have created a whole new set of limitations and concerns for new parents. Many new parents are...
48m Aug 21, 2020
48m
Iowa Derecho, Showering And Hygiene, Parasites. August 21, 2020, Part 2
Dealing With The Aftermath Of Iowa’s Devastating Derecho  It’s been more than a week since the state of Iowa was hit by a surprise visitor: a line of thunderstorms with unusual power and duration, known as a derecho. The storms swept from South Dakota to Ohio in the course of a day. At its most powerful, the derecho hit Iowa’s Linn County and surroundings with hurricane-force winds amid the ra...
48m Aug 21, 2020
48m
Contraceptive Access, Robot Bias, Story Structure. August 14, 2020, Part 2
Roboticists, like other artificial intelligence researchers, are concerned about how bias affects our relationship with machines that are supposed to help us. But what happens when the bias is not in the machine itself, but in the people trying to use it? Ayanna Howard, a roboticist at Georgia Tech, went looking to see if the “gender” of a robot, whether it was a female-coded robotic assistant...
48m Aug 14, 2020
48m
Faster COVID-19 Testing, Hell Ants. August 14, 2020, Part 1
Throughout the pandemic, testing has continued to be one of the biggest issues, particularly in the United States. Some scientists say that the solution is to rethink our COVID-19 testing strategy, focusing on making faster, cheaper tests. While these more cost-effective tests may be lower in sensitivity than the PCR tests and perhaps not as accurate, they would allow for more people to get tes...
47m Aug 14, 2020
47m
SciFri en Español: El Río Hirviente De Perú Tiene Más De Lo Que El Ojo Ve
En el verano del 2019, Rosa Vásquez Espinoza bioquímica y candidata a Ph.D. en la Universidad de Michigan Ann Arbor, fue en una expedición al Río Hirviente en la Amazonía peruana para colectar microbios. Ahora, está tratando de comprender el papel que juegan los microbios en la creación de productos naturales, y cómo esa maquinaria se podría utilizar más adelante para manufacturar posibles medi...
21m Aug 12, 2020
21m
The End of Everything, Bright Fluorescence, Gene Editing a Squid. August 7, 2020, Part 2
When it comes to the eventual end of our universe, cosmologists have a few classic theories: the Big Crunch, where the universe reverses its expansion and contracts again, setting the stars themselves on fire in the process. Or the Big Rip, where the universe expands forever—but in a fundamentally unstable way that tears matter itself apart. Or it might be heat death, in which matter and energy...
47m Aug 07, 2020
47m
Biden Climate Plan, Boiling River. August 7, 2020, Part 1
Last month, former Vice President Joe Biden unveiled his plan for climate change—a sweeping $2 trillion dollar platform (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/bidens-climate-plan/) that aims to tighten standards for clean energy, decarbonize the electrical grid by 2035, and reach carbon neutrality for the whole country by 2050. Biden’s plan, like the Green New Deal, purports to create millions...
47m Aug 07, 2020
47m